frevvo 6.1 Features – Rule Editor Improvements

A new version of frevvo is now available and includes some significant improvements for writing business rules including:

syntax highlighting

autocomplete

full page editing

In this article, I’ll quickly highlight these features and provide examples of how they can assist in writing rules.

Syntax Highlighting

Previous versions of frevvo used a bare bones textarea control for keying in the rules:

Here’s the same rule in 6.1:

In this rule, javascript keywords, native type values (like string and booleans) and block braces are highlighted with different colors. Line numbers have been added as well. Based on the cursor position, brackets and parentheses will be highlighted in green so it’s easy to find matching pairs. This is particularly useful when you have multiple levels of nesting and you are trying to figure out which pair of parenthesis is part of the the same expression:

Autocomplete

Autocomplete has been added which means you don’t need to remember or lookup an item’s properties. For example, when you type a control followed by a dot, all of the control’s properties are presented immediately in a dropdown:

You can see all the EmployeeID control’s properties and select the one you want without having to type the entire property name.

Maximize Editor & Code Collapse

Finally one of my favorite features in this release: the maximize editor! If you have a larger complex rule you can click the maximize icon and the rule editor will use the full real estate of the page:

Of course if you’ve got really large rules consider breaking them up into smaller more manageable rules but nevertheless it is great to have the option to view rules full screen.

Finally, you’ll notice the arrows to the right of the numbers. These can be used to collapse and expand entire blocks of code. For example, clicking the arrow in line 6, will hide lines 7 thru 34 in the example above:

Summary

Business rule authoring is one of the most powerful features in frevvo and with these enhancements, designers can build their rules more easily than ever.